plantyhamchuk:

There’s something going on with this tree, though we can’t quite agree or decide on what. This is NOT good peach tree growing territory, as the warm winters + late frosts mean that most years, the blooms are taken out by the frosts. Still, this is one of our oldest fruit trees and we have gotten some good crops from it. Not in the past two years though.

I have been working hard on trying to weed under it, as I think it’ll help. V thinks it is doomed, due to bad root stock. It may be. The soil around the base of the tree feels very mushy, as if the roots have rotted. Unlike a potted plant, where you can just flip things over to check out the root system, figuring out root health issues is harder when the tree is in the ground.

It did get one dose of Serenade this spring.

After years of gardening in Atlanta more conventionally, and doing this Food Forest thing in Appalachia, and comparing it to how our other hardcore garden/farm friends are faring, I’m now seeing the pros and cons of different methods. 

If there’s one thing to be said about gardening, there is ALWAYS more to learn. New plants, new methods, new locations, new products, new philosophies. And the gardens themselves are constantly changing, evolving, transitioning to something different. 

When we first planted the fruit trees, they were in our outer zones (a la permaculture). Now the soil near those early fruit trees has been worked and improved the most, getting better every year for annual food production. But the fruit trees are maturing, their canopies spreading, shading out this good soil. Every year the boundary line of what is improved soil / things at least vaguely tended / invasives wacked back is pushed further out.  

It seems like I’m continually chasing sunlight as the trees grow.

So while I’m on board with the concept of permaculture zones (which is basically - the more you’re going to use something / the more it requires tending, place it closer to the home), and think it’s a useful concept, our zones have had to shift and change and now become a bit jumbled as we’ve cleared and worked in such a large space. It might be different if we were on flat land and using heavy machinery instead of doing all this stuff by hand and back, but there’s been a learning curve over the years (+ serious budget considerations). Would I do it differently if I’d known when we first started what I know now? I don’t think so.